Are Canadian Municipal Politics Ideological? Experimental Evidence from Canadian Municipal Officials

Scholars continue to debate whether ideology shapes Canadian municipal politics, yielding mixed results. To test this argument further, I conducted a survey experiment on over 700 municipal officials through the Canadian Municipal Barometer. Based on their self-reported ideology, respondents were randomly assigned to one of three groups: an ideologically congruent province, an ideologically incongruent province, and a control group in which the ideology of the provincial government is omitted. Respondents then read a hypothetical prompt explaining that a newly elected provincial government plans to pass a series of environmental laws prohibiting municipalities from passing their own. Municipal officials facing intervention from an ideologically incongruent province were substantially more opposed to intervention. Moreover, municipal officials were significantly more likely to support being consulted—or being required to give their consent—when facing policy intervention from an ideologically incongruent province.